5 ms·

> Of course people don't quit their jobs and careers because they are part of a small group enrolled in a 3-year scientific study. Except the study did show pe

by yorwba 2y ago

> Of course people don't quit their jobs and careers because they are part of a small group enrolled in a 3-year scientific study. Except the study did show people quitting their jobs at a higher rate. But they mostly switched to new jobs instead of becoming unemployed. Of course people given the choice between working less or making more money usually choose the money. People who choose otherwise are already part-timing/episodically employed/on unemployment benefits/getting subsidized by their family. Presumably there's a level of UBI where most people wouldn't see the need to work anymore, but if they quit permanently, this will reduce the supply of goods, increasing prices and limiting how much UBI can buy, to the point where people are incentivized to start working again. So it's a self-regulating system. Of course it would be less disruptive to start with a very low UBI that gradually increases, instead of starting high and letting inflation sort out the rest.

spidersenses 2y ago
>Of course it would be less disruptive to start with a very low UBI that gradually increases This is a very good point that I haven't even heard made by proponents of this idea before. Thanks!
SoftTalker 2y ago
You could argue it's a self-regulating system as well with UBI at zero.
meinersbur 2y ago
It also matters what jobs they change to. There is a documentary out there showing someone who could quit their regular job and become an artist thanks to an UBI pilot (Canada IIRC). It is presented as a positive example in that they did not become lazy, but just work something different and still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art. How many people will become artists with UBI introduced nationally? Who is going to buy all that art?
- ForHackernews 2y ago
  Who cares if anyone buys the art? In a world with basic income where people didn't have to worry about survival wages, people could make art just because they were moved to make art.
  - unclad5968 2y ago
    And where will the money for UBI come from when everyone quits their job for non-income generating hobbies?
    - ForHackernews 2y ago
      Tax the AI companies? Their bots are built on the plundered wealth of all mankind and that wealth belongs to the commonweal by right. It's funny that this board can easily imagine AI destroying humanity but can't imagine a world where it enables them to quit their job.
  - bko 2y ago
    I don't know, they went from productive work (someone paying them to do it) to unproductive work. This is the old Keynesian argument I never bought that you can pay people to dig ditches and fill them back in and it would stimulate the economy.
    - h2zizzle 2y ago
      "still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art." Read more closely.
    - ludston 2y ago
      To be fair, there is a massive percentage of non-productive jobs that are mostly security guards for goods and locations, and many inefficient roles related to ticket clipping, inefficient distribution and marketing that all stimulate the economy without being productive.
    - toss1 2y ago
Izikiel43 2y ago
> Except the study did show people quitting their jobs at a higher rate. But they mostly switched to new jobs instead of becoming unemployed. Didn't something similar happened during Covid due to stimulus checks? People were confident on applying for new jobs since they had the stimulus check as a backup.
- mc3301 2y ago
  Yeah, this kind of mobility (or lack thereof) is what keeps a lot of poor people poor. Moving is expensive, leaving your current job is expensive, job searching is expensive, upskilling is expensive... Most people don't have the financial freedom to do any of those, thus they are stuck. This also means that their potential is never fully met, because they just gotta makes ends meet.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pj_mukh 2y ago
I think the nuance here is that the income in Universal Basic Income is a stand-in for "everyone's basic needs should be met". But income doesn't guarantee that, because prices go up and down for a variety of reasons. What people actually want is Universal Basic Buying Power. I should be able to get a roof over my head, get food and an education. It sucks that it's this complicated but in terms of government policy sometimes UBI is cash handouts, other times it should be supply-side investments, and as the original commenter laid out, none of these research experiments are running that experiment.
- h2zizzle 2y ago
  I mean, even that's something of a misconception. Let's start with an axiom: there are enough people and resources, both locally and universally, to provide every human being with enough to eat every day and a safe place to sleep every night (acts of God notwithstanding). That's an objective truth; technologically and logistically, we are there as a civilization. So a guarantee of access to something that already exists is a matter of policy, not economy. The doomsayers are just wrong on this one, unless the first act of UBI recipients would be to burn farms, blow up the rail network, and release pests into vacant housing, or something (though I don't doubt that this scenario is precisely what they expect; after so many studies, it's safe to call anti-UBI rhetoric a rationalization of unsubstantiated class hysteria).
  - floxy 2y ago
    https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps_part_2.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_sta...
    - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
      I’m actually blown away by that article. Fucking clever shit. Gonna save the other parts and read em later.
  - dostick 2y ago
    And we have been producing enough to feed and house everyone for about 40 years now. Henry Ford introduced 5 day workweek and with the productivity trend we should be working one day a week by now. It is not happening because in eyes of capitalism a person is only valuable and accepted if they have an occupation that produce value, whether needed or not. Consequence of that, 50% of workforce is “bullshit jobs” made to keep people employed, like marketing, finance and such. Because people sadly are brainwashed to be working from cradle to grave, it will take few generations for UBI to become unconditional and part of life, like we have with free healthcare (not you, U.S.).
TulliusCicero 2y ago
> Except the study did show people quitting their jobs at a higher rate. But they mostly switched to new jobs instead of becoming unemployed. Right, GP was clearly referring to to > Does a basic income make people lazy? This assumption has been widely discussed, but never substantiated. The Basic Income Pilot Project demonstrates that the opposite is true. If you knew you could get by forever without a job, that's very different from having a 3-year period where you can get by without a job. Especially when it comes to people coming of age. Think about the average 18 year old: if they could just 'get by' for a long time, it'd be awfully tempting.
- em-bee 2y ago
  i'd argue that many will get bored after a few years. encourage everyone to do something meaningful and the problem will go away.
m463 2y ago
I remember living somewhere where native americans got guaranteed income each month. There was a group of them that would spend their life outside the liquor store, sitting on the curb drinking.
- briantakita 2y ago
  Alcoholism happens to people who have jobs as well. Though there's a policy of being sober at work which limits drinking to off hours. Another possibility is that Basic Income alone doesn't solve all problems. Life direction & perceived opportunity to better oneself is needed. Basic Income may enable destructive behavior. But the underlying root cause may still be present even if the person is employed.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Most people need more than mere "opportunity to better oneself". It's almost always a shortage of motivation. UBI would reduce this motivation, I believe.
    - tbossanova 2y ago
      The current state of things is insanely demotivating, so I wouldn’t be so sure
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Native Americans may be the best modern example of a group who's poorly habituated to urban living settings. For centuries, White Man has tried to assimilate the indigeneous into cityfolk and teach them our languages and our ways, and there's been so much resistance to that. In fact, I propose that most human beings don't like being corralled into individualistic "cells" and so far removed from "nature" or subsistence farming/shepherding that we completely lose touch with other living things. Urban living was such a moral affront to indigeneous cultures, and even the Irish were sort of upset by the imposition, y'know? Many homeless people on the streets simply don't know how to live. They don't know how to care for a home, how to run a kitchen, how to keep their clothes clean, how to do medical care, how to run household finances and pay bills. They're feral, essentially: how many people adopt feral cats or wild animals? They're nightmares. Anyone who simply says "housing first" or "UBI" will solve poverty and homelessness, you're in an ivory tower and you've never been on-the-ground with actual people who can't be housed. Look at a population of 100 and you'll discern 100 reasons for that homelessness and poverty. I'm lucky and privileged that I got independent living situation under control and was able to rehabilitate and habituate to a sort of ordinary middle-class lifestyle, because it was essentially reverting to my childhood environment. Other people came from abuse, addiction, and shitty circumstances, and they have no idea what it's like to be clean and clear-headed. The reason that entitlements are this way currently is to ensure that qualified people can get and keep their benefits. Section 8 HUD housing has a lot of strict rules around the owners, landlords, and the tenants, and learning those rules helped me know what a decent and well-maintained household looks like. Maintaining HUD standards was paramount to me keeping that assistance. Likewise food stamps (SNAP) can't be used for liquor or non-nutritious goods and other food programs deliver wholesome stuff you can use and eat, so it sets good examples to otherwise feral humans that it's important not to live on Doritos and beer, because they will try! UBI is absurd to me where if you're just handing me fistfuls of cash I can do anything I want, and people will run with that, I guarantee ya. UBI is no solution to the symptoms or root causes of poverty. Personally, I believe we need a return to collectivism, an end to rugged individuality, and more communal-style housing situations. Independent living is a real grind, because of so many responsibilities, and I have tons of neighbors but no friends. Many people would do better with shared spaces like kitchens, bathrooms, cafeterias, but those types of residences are essentially illegal in the US by means of zoning, except in unique circumstances like a special work-train-live program. And placing feral or mentally ill people into shared spaces can be a recipe for disaster, unless it's a professional institutional setting, and that's precisely what the Reagan administration eliminated from the "bad old days".

by yorwba 2y ago

spidersenses 2y ago

>Of course it would be less disruptive to start with a very low UBI that gradually increases This is a very good point that I haven't even heard made by proponents of this idea before. Thanks!

SoftTalker 2y ago

You could argue it's a self-regulating system as well with UBI at zero.

meinersbur 2y ago

It also matters what jobs they change to. There is a documentary out there showing someone who could quit their regular job and become an artist thanks to an UBI pilot (Canada IIRC). It is presented as a positive example in that they did not become lazy, but just work something different and still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art. How many people will become artists with UBI introduced nationally? Who is going to buy all that art?

ForHackernews 2y ago
Who cares if anyone buys the art? In a world with basic income where people didn't have to worry about survival wages, people could make art just because they were moved to make art.
- unclad5968 2y ago
  And where will the money for UBI come from when everyone quits their job for non-income generating hobbies?
  - ForHackernews 2y ago
    Tax the AI companies? Their bots are built on the plundered wealth of all mankind and that wealth belongs to the commonweal by right. It's funny that this board can easily imagine AI destroying humanity but can't imagine a world where it enables them to quit their job.
- bko 2y ago
  I don't know, they went from productive work (someone paying them to do it) to unproductive work. This is the old Keynesian argument I never bought that you can pay people to dig ditches and fill them back in and it would stimulate the economy.
  - h2zizzle 2y ago
    "still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art." Read more closely.
  - ludston 2y ago
    To be fair, there is a massive percentage of non-productive jobs that are mostly security guards for goods and locations, and many inefficient roles related to ticket clipping, inefficient distribution and marketing that all stimulate the economy without being productive.
  - toss1 2y ago

Izikiel43 2y ago

> Except the study did show people quitting their jobs at a higher rate. But they mostly switched to new jobs instead of becoming unemployed. Didn't something similar happened during Covid due to stimulus checks? People were confident on applying for new jobs since they had the stimulus check as a backup.

mc3301 2y ago
Yeah, this kind of mobility (or lack thereof) is what keeps a lot of poor people poor. Moving is expensive, leaving your current job is expensive, job searching is expensive, upskilling is expensive... Most people don't have the financial freedom to do any of those, thus they are stuck. This also means that their potential is never fully met, because they just gotta makes ends meet.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pj_mukh 2y ago

I think the nuance here is that the income in Universal Basic Income is a stand-in for "everyone's basic needs should be met". But income doesn't guarantee that, because prices go up and down for a variety of reasons. What people actually want is Universal Basic Buying Power. I should be able to get a roof over my head, get food and an education. It sucks that it's this complicated but in terms of government policy sometimes UBI is cash handouts, other times it should be supply-side investments, and as the original commenter laid out, none of these research experiments are running that experiment.

h2zizzle 2y ago
I mean, even that's something of a misconception. Let's start with an axiom: there are enough people and resources, both locally and universally, to provide every human being with enough to eat every day and a safe place to sleep every night (acts of God notwithstanding). That's an objective truth; technologically and logistically, we are there as a civilization. So a guarantee of access to something that already exists is a matter of policy, not economy. The doomsayers are just wrong on this one, unless the first act of UBI recipients would be to burn farms, blow up the rail network, and release pests into vacant housing, or something (though I don't doubt that this scenario is precisely what they expect; after so many studies, it's safe to call anti-UBI rhetoric a rationalization of unsubstantiated class hysteria).
- floxy 2y ago
  https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps_part_2.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_sta...
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    I’m actually blown away by that article. Fucking clever shit. Gonna save the other parts and read em later.
- dostick 2y ago
  And we have been producing enough to feed and house everyone for about 40 years now. Henry Ford introduced 5 day workweek and with the productivity trend we should be working one day a week by now. It is not happening because in eyes of capitalism a person is only valuable and accepted if they have an occupation that produce value, whether needed or not. Consequence of that, 50% of workforce is “bullshit jobs” made to keep people employed, like marketing, finance and such. Because people sadly are brainwashed to be working from cradle to grave, it will take few generations for UBI to become unconditional and part of life, like we have with free healthcare (not you, U.S.).

TulliusCicero 2y ago

> Except the study did show people quitting their jobs at a higher rate. But they mostly switched to new jobs instead of becoming unemployed. Right, GP was clearly referring to to > Does a basic income make people lazy? This assumption has been widely discussed, but never substantiated. The Basic Income Pilot Project demonstrates that the opposite is true. If you knew you could get by forever without a job, that's very different from having a 3-year period where you can get by without a job. Especially when it comes to people coming of age. Think about the average 18 year old: if they could just 'get by' for a long time, it'd be awfully tempting.

em-bee 2y ago
i'd argue that many will get bored after a few years. encourage everyone to do something meaningful and the problem will go away.

m463 2y ago

I remember living somewhere where native americans got guaranteed income each month. There was a group of them that would spend their life outside the liquor store, sitting on the curb drinking.

briantakita 2y ago
Alcoholism happens to people who have jobs as well. Though there's a policy of being sober at work which limits drinking to off hours. Another possibility is that Basic Income alone doesn't solve all problems. Life direction & perceived opportunity to better oneself is needed. Basic Income may enable destructive behavior. But the underlying root cause may still be present even if the person is employed.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Most people need more than mere "opportunity to better oneself". It's almost always a shortage of motivation. UBI would reduce this motivation, I believe.
  - tbossanova 2y ago
    The current state of things is insanely demotivating, so I wouldn’t be so sure
AStonesThrow 2y ago
Native Americans may be the best modern example of a group who's poorly habituated to urban living settings. For centuries, White Man has tried to assimilate the indigeneous into cityfolk and teach them our languages and our ways, and there's been so much resistance to that. In fact, I propose that most human beings don't like being corralled into individualistic "cells" and so far removed from "nature" or subsistence farming/shepherding that we completely lose touch with other living things. Urban living was such a moral affront to indigeneous cultures, and even the Irish were sort of upset by the imposition, y'know? Many homeless people on the streets simply don't know how to live. They don't know how to care for a home, how to run a kitchen, how to keep their clothes clean, how to do medical care, how to run household finances and pay bills. They're feral, essentially: how many people adopt feral cats or wild animals? They're nightmares. Anyone who simply says "housing first" or "UBI" will solve poverty and homelessness, you're in an ivory tower and you've never been on-the-ground with actual people who can't be housed. Look at a population of 100 and you'll discern 100 reasons for that homelessness and poverty. I'm lucky and privileged that I got independent living situation under control and was able to rehabilitate and habituate to a sort of ordinary middle-class lifestyle, because it was essentially reverting to my childhood environment. Other people came from abuse, addiction, and shitty circumstances, and they have no idea what it's like to be clean and clear-headed. The reason that entitlements are this way currently is to ensure that qualified people can get and keep their benefits. Section 8 HUD housing has a lot of strict rules around the owners, landlords, and the tenants, and learning those rules helped me know what a decent and well-maintained household looks like. Maintaining HUD standards was paramount to me keeping that assistance. Likewise food stamps (SNAP) can't be used for liquor or non-nutritious goods and other food programs deliver wholesome stuff you can use and eat, so it sets good examples to otherwise feral humans that it's important not to live on Doritos and beer, because they will try! UBI is absurd to me where if you're just handing me fistfuls of cash I can do anything I want, and people will run with that, I guarantee ya. UBI is no solution to the symptoms or root causes of poverty. Personally, I believe we need a return to collectivism, an end to rugged individuality, and more communal-style housing situations. Independent living is a real grind, because of so many responsibilities, and I have tons of neighbors but no friends. Many people would do better with shared spaces like kitchens, bathrooms, cafeterias, but those types of residences are essentially illegal in the US by means of zoning, except in unique circumstances like a special work-train-live program. And placing feral or mentally ill people into shared spaces can be a recipe for disaster, unless it's a professional institutional setting, and that's precisely what the Reagan administration eliminated from the "bad old days".